Nobody asked for my opinion, but I feel like pontificating.
I'm a dominant, and personally lack a submissive mindset, so everything I know is secondhand. But I think I've managed to piece together a little bit of insight.
I'd like to bring forward exhibit #1: The modern roller coaster.
Why do people like them? Surely it's not as a mode of transportation, per se. A roller coaster lets you out at nearly the exact same place as you got on. It can't be the speed. Cars on the freeway go in some cases twice as fast. The answer that immediately comes to mind is that the rides are thrilling. But why? It's because of the lack of control. A roller coaster is thrilling because it is unpredictable, and it is unpredictable because the rider has no control. People will line up, sometimes for an hour, to cede control of their position and velocity to a machine. But why is that, in and of itself, thrilling? People have the same lack of control when they board a train, but that doesn't have the same level of excitement. Roller coasters are thrilling because they have a perception of danger to them, coupled with that lack of control.
In the United States last year, there were about 8,000 emergency room visits caused by accidents relating to amusement park rides. That sounds like a lot, but by contrast, we *kill* more than 30,000 people every year in cars. Clearly, roller coasters are safe - orders of magnitude safer than cars. And yet, riding in a car is not at all (or at least, is not supposed to be) "thrilling." So it's certainly not a lack of *actual* safety that drives the thrill factor of roller coasters, merely the *perception*.
Can you see the parallels I'm drawing here? Submissives seek to cede control over themselves to a dominant. The thrill they get from doing so is the *perception* that doing so is unsafe, while in actuality, they must, of course, be confident that they are safe in their dominant's hands.
Not everyone is a submissive, but then, not everyone likes roller coasters either.
Active Ink Slinger
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My novel, The Society, is available now in the Kindle Store: http://www.amazon.com/The-Society-ebook/dp/B00BPF9U2I
good analogy.
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